The Cinepub First Annual Obligatory Xmas Season Top 10 Christmas Films That I Enjoy To Like!

Well, it’s that time of year again. People are roasting their nuts on open fires, toy companies a greedily stroking their chins in manners befitting their evil geniusnous and children are pissing themselves in the laps of creepy strangers wearing false beards. Merry Christmas!

It seems as though this is a blog about films and as such I am pretty much required by law to do a list containing my favourite Christmas movies of all time. I managed to resist doing a list of scary films at Halloween but I’m afraid I just can’t fight the mainstream on this. I fear that if I do, my blogging licence will be revoked and I’ll be forced to go back to not making money doing other things and I can’t have that.

So let’s begin shall we?

10) Santa Claus: The Movie

Since my first Christmas I’m fairly sure I’ve seen this Saint Nick biopic every damn year. (Though that’s impossible as it was released a year after my first Christmas but I digress) The film begins with Santa Claus gaining magical powers for he is the chosen one. The film ends up with Dudley Moore playing an elf teaming up with John Lithgow playing an evil business tycoon for some reason. Awesome!

9) Ernest Saves Christmas

Ernest P. Worrell featured quite heavily in my early life for some reason. In particular I remember two films, Ernest Scared Stupid and Ernest Saves Christmas. Since I can’t put Ernest Scared Stupid on this list I’m gonna have to put Ernest Saves Christmas on this list. The film tells the story of Ernest’s mission to find a replacement for Santa who’s getting close to retirement. In no way is it a fantastic film but it ain’t The Santa Clause and that counts for something.

8) Home Alone

Another one from my childhood. For some reason I may have seen this film more than any other film that has ever or will ever exist. It just always happens to be on for some reason. Either my brothers watching it, my cousins watching it or someone else is watching it and, having nothing better to do, I end up watching it too. You know the plot. Hell, you’ve probably seen it a thousand times too.

7) The Muppet Christmas Carol

A telling of the Charles Dickens’ story starring the loveable cast of the Muppets and the loveable aged cockney, Michael Caine. Particular pieces of awesome: Statler and Waldorf as the ghosts of Marley and Marley, Kermit and Piggy as Mr and Mrs Cratchit and an awesome Ghost of Christmas Future. As long as Future looks enough like Death in a Christmas Carol movie then I’m sold.

6) How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Yes, the animated TV special, not the one with Jim Carrey. Sprung forth from the surrealistic mind of Dr. Seuss and narrated by Boris Fucking Karloff. It’s the classic tale of a hairy green freak who wants to stop Whoville from enjoying Christmas only to have is heart grow three times that day. Man, I’m hungry for roast beast.

5) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

It’s Christmas time at the Griswold’s and every body is coming to stay! Nothing goes smoothly, every little event working it’s way tirelessly and relentlessly to ruin Clark’s dream of a perfect Christmas. Every second of this film have things going from bad, to worse to uber-bad and it’s all very, very funny.

4) Scrooged

Another retelling of Dickens’ story, this time starring William Murray. This film modernizes the story as bastard television producer Francis attempts to make his own live version of the story only to have the events within it happen to him. As I said before as long as they have a good Ghost of Christmas Future I’m sold and in this film motherfucker is the Grim Reaper with a TV for a face. Awesome.

3) Lethal Weapon

It’s the greatest buddy cop movie ever made and also a damn good Christmas film. Ok so maybe it’s technically not a Christmas film but it’s set at Christmas time so it counts. Riggs is a cop with nothing to lose and Murtaugh is just getting’ too old for this shit. The film culminates with Riggs spending Christmas at the Murtaugh household so it definetly counts.

2) Die Hard

This is possibly the greatest action movie ever made and it’s a shame what the franchise has become but thankfully the knowledge that Die Hard 4.0 exists cannot take away from the awesome that is this film. I still feel tense watching certain parts of it, no matter how many times I watch it. This one also feels a lot more Christmassy than Lethal Weapon so it gets extra points for that.

1) Gremlins

Ah, what can I say about Gremlins that hasn’t already been said? Did you ever get a dog for Christmas? Then the dog got wet and more dogs sprouted out of his back? And then when the new dogs ate after midnight they turned into ravenous reptillian wolves? That’s kinda like this film but with mogwai and gremlins instead of dogs and wolves. There’s plenty of fun here as the titular characters just generally cause mayhem on Christmas night. They dress up as carolers, attack Santa Claus and kill an old woman! Ho, Ho, Ho Merry Christmas!

Great Scenes From Shit Films, Part 1

With the revelation that I do indeed own several hundred fucking awful films on DVD, not just Mac and Me, I’ve decided to do regular blog posts about them, or to be more specific, regular blog posts about great scenes within these otherwise reprehensible cinematic abortions.
So today, why not start off with that film I’d really rather forget I own, “Mac and Me”. First some background.

In 1982 Steven Spielberg released a little film called “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (Slightly redundant if you ask me, but I guess no one is.) The film recieved rave reviews and launced the career of Drew Barrymore, eventually launching her into rehab by the age of 13 and finally launching her into her latest role as a chihuahua in the Disney film “Beverly Hills Chihuahua”
Deciding to cash in on the popularity of the film, Orion Pictures/McDonalds decided to release Mac and Me a mere six years later. The film follows a familiar plot and since I refuse to watch the film again, this synopsis is mostly from memory.

A family of aliens is living on the moon or Mars or somewhere, drinking strange liquids from beneath the planets/satellites surface with straws before getting sucked into a NASA probe and accidentally brought back to Earth. The youngest alien accidentally get seperated from the rest of his family and somehow ends up befriending a kid in a wheelchair, who I shall now refer to as Wheels. Wheels calls the alien Mac, apparently standing for Mysterious Alien Creature though I always feel as though there should be the word Big at the beginning of his name.

Mac then puts on a bear costume and dances in McDonalds before going to find the rest of his family with the help of Wheels and his brother, in a desert whilst eating McFlurry’s, except for Mac who can only drink Coca-Cola through a straw due to his disturbing blow up doll mouth configuration.

They find Mac’s family who are seriously dehydrated but thankfully some Coca-Cola sorts ‘em right out. I also think wind farms are important for some reason. Anyway, in a scene that really freaked me out as a child (And I admit I still have some trouble watching it today) the father alien gets a gun and starts shooting at shit for some reason. I’m not sure why this scared me so much, but I think it’s something to do with the father’s odd, shambling, writhing gait, like some kind of zombie made of snakes… Oh god, it’s horrific.

Anyway, everything is all sorted out and the aliens are officially made citizens of McDonald Land, I mean the United States of America, probably because the father was so pro-gun rights.

To sum up even quicker, the fucking film is an advert for McDonalds, Coca-Cola and various other commercial enterprises. The trailer even has Ronald McDonald in it. Seriously look it up.
The film is a travesty and actually causes a condition known as Sand Paper Lung, in which the sufferer, having lost the will to live, actually reconfigures their DNA, causing their lungs to transform into actual sand paper and as they breath, they slowly sand away their innards until no thing is left but a gaping hole in their chest.

Despite this there are two scenes which really stick out. The first is the afforementioned dancing in McDonalds scene, which I may feature in some future blog post. The second is the following scene, affectionally called “The Infamous Wheelchair Scene.” Enjoy!